Tag: South Africa

Horse-trading got underway over the past week in South Africa as ruling African National Congress (ANC) – Africa’s oldest liberation movement-turned political party – reached out for possible alliances to enable it to form a new government. The party that was once led by legendary Nelson Mandela lost its electoral dominance for the first time in the rainbow country’s post-apartheid history, forcing it into an uncharted territory where it must seek coalition partners to be able to govern.

The outcome of the May 29th parliamentary elections in South Africa upended ANC’s 30-year majority rule. It was its worst showing since the end of apartheid. The party came off with 40.18 percent of the votes to win 159 spots in the 400-seat national assembly, down from 230 seats it controlled in the previous assembly. Other big three winners are the main opposition party, Democratic Alliance (DA),  which got 21.81 percent of the votes; uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), 14.58 percent; and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), 9.52 percent. Whereas DA is perceived as white dominated and centre-right in orientation, both MKP and EFF are radical-left splinters of ANC and are believed to have helped with its humiliation by pulling away its black votes. Jacob Zuma, a former president of the country and leader of ANC who lost out to incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2018 following a bitter power struggle, founded MKP only last December; while a former ANC youth leader, Julius Malema, has long been the arrowhead of EFF.

A record 70 parties and 11 independents participated in the elections to form a new national parliament and nine provincial legislatures. By South African laws, voters decide how many seats each party gets in parliament, leaving lawmakers to subsequently elect the country’s president from the largest party or coalition in the legislature. The new parliament is required to hold its inaugural sitting and elect the president within 14 days of the final election results being declared. South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) made that declaration on Sunday, June 2nd, meaning the new parliament has barely a week from today to its sitting.

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ANC, the party of venerated Mandela who led the struggle that freed South Africa from apartheid white minority rule, swept to power in 1994 on a pledge to “build a better life for all,” taking almost 63 percent of the vote in the country’s first democratic election that Madiba won after being released in 1990 from more than 27 years of political incarceration. It had won every previous national election since that historic vote by landslide and governed with a comfortable majority. But its support dwindled over the past decade as the economy stagnated and fuelled widespread poverty, unemployment rate ballooned and infrastructural facilities degenerated in the nation of 62million people. This latest election sounded the death knell on ANC’s dominance, revealing an unprecedented slump in its support base as voters shifted their loyalty. The party of Madiba’s heirs lost Madiba’s magic. The country must now learn to dance the coalition dance – a dance that under the best of conditions is fraught with partners stepping on one another’s toes. ANC is only down but not out, though. Ramaphosa is eligible to keep his job for a second and final five-year term because the party yet has the most votes. But he and the party are weakened as they must enlist coalition partners – something never done before at national level – to be able to form a majority government.

Following the electoral body’s declaration of the final results, Ramaphosa called on political parties to work together for the good of the country. “South Africans expect the parties for which they have voted to find common ground, overcome their differences and act together for the good of everyone. That’s what South Africans have said,” he stated in a public address, describing the poll as “victory for our democracy.” The president added: “Our people have spoken. Whether we like it or not, they have spoken. We have heard the voices of our people and we must respect their choices and their wishes… The people of South Africa expect their leaders to work together to meet their needs.”

South Africa before now had coalition governments at provincial and municipal levels that have mostly been rocky, but it never needed to have one at the national level. The outcome of the May 29th poll, however, imposes that necessity. ANC and, by extension, South Africa are confronted with difficult choices – all of which are bitter pills fraught with challenges down the road.

One possible choice is for ANC to forge an alliance with Zuma’s MKP and / or Malema’s EFF that are its splinters. But that isn’t an easy option as it may seem, because it was disillusionment with the ruling party’s moderate policies amidst pervasive poverty and a feeling of economic exclusion among blacks that Zuma and Malema capitalized on to move to the radical left. And it isn’t like ANC is set to move over there to join them. Both EFF and MKP espouse seizing white-owned land without compensation, and nationalising the country’s gold and platinum mines that are among the world’s biggest producers. The two splinter parties are perceived as not business-friendly, and an alliance by ANC with them could alienate investors and lead to further slump in the economy and, in effect, lack of job creation. In any event, there is a personality conflict between Mr. Ramaphosa and Mr. Zuma that poisons the well. The ex-president turned a fierce critic of the incumbent after he was forced to resign as ANC leader in 2018 and served a brief stint in jail in 2021 for contempt of court. On the heels of the latest election, Zuma’s party said it would be prepared to work with ANC on condition that Ramaphosa steps down from the helm – a condition that ANC leadership ruled out of hand outright.

Another option is for ANC to forge a coalition on the political right with DA: a prospect viewed as having the greatest potential for stability. But that choice is no less problematic than reaching out to the radical left, considering significant philosophical differences between the two sides about the role of government and how to overcome the country’s economic and social challenges. For ANC, empowerment policies aimed at giving black people a stake in the economy following their exclusion during the racist apartheid era are “non-negotiable.” DA, however, objects to ‘big government’ and its leader, John Steenhuisen, advocates pro-market economy that treats the private sector as partners in the growth agenda, greater focus on frugality and efficiency in government. Analysts fear that even if the two sides manage to forge a coalition, it could be dogged by instability that would discourage investment, and investors could keep the sidelines and thereby withhold the life gas the economy badly needs. Foreign policy could also be conflicted.

One possible choice, of course, is for ANC to cobble marginal parties that won a collective total of 13.91 percent of votes in the May poll into a coalition. Only it would be like managing a house of commotion to synthesize their diverse ideological leanings into a governance template – a prospect that could gridlock government business and send investors fleeing the country. There is also the remote possibility of ANC going it alone with a minority government. But such a government would be inevitably unstable, as getting anything through parliament would be almost impossible. If the annual budget isn’t passed, for instance, spending becomes unauthorised – a messy situation politically and economically. ANC has itself downplayed this option because it would make governance an uphill task.

There are no easy choices for the seventh administration of ANC in post-apartheid South Africa, and the citizens will have to hang on to their seats for a rocky five years ahead. Still, there are positive takeaways for other countries like Nigeria:

(i) Whatever arrangement South Africa comes up with will be a government of compromises and accommodation of political diversity. National interest will be topmost in consideration.

(ii) The parties are identifiable with their different ideological leanings that have to be negotiated upon. You could ask: what political ideology can Nigerian political parties be respectively identified with?

(iii) South African voters delivered a verdict that was long in coming on an errant party that made its association with iconic Mandela its presumptive credential. Mandela’s memory remains venerated, but ANC will have to prove its own mettle. The people will always matter; and

(iv) Voters are the true jury on performance by the political class. The process of their delivering their verdict – i.e. elections – must be unimpeachable. 

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• ANC lost. Democracy won. A critical juncture dawns

Since the coming of democracy in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) just lost its parliamentary majority in South Africa, after the May 29 general elections.

The vote tally, among the top four parties: ANC — 40.18%, Democratic Alternative (DA) — 21.81%, uMhonto we Sizwe (NK) — 14.58%, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) — 9.52%.

From a 57.5% share of the vote in 2019 (winning 230 seats from the 400-member state parliament), ANC’s share tumbled to 40.18%; and its share of parliamentary seats, down to 159 — thus surrendering its majority. 

Were ANC still to form the government — and by law, it has till June 16 to cobble together a coalition to do that — the party of the great Nelson Mandela, though still the biggest in parliament, would have to share ruling space with others.

The ANC lost — and the reason is clear, given these dire socio-economic statistics, courtesy this summary from ‘The Conversation’, a South African publication: an economy with “negative per capital growth, high and rising unemployment, poverty and inequality, a government deeply in debt, and 26 million people — 42% of the population — on grants.” 

That appears a near-socio-economic meltdown, from the post-apartheid promise of 1994.

Yes, ANC lost — a crushing loss with a 17% vote decline from its 57.5% share in 2019. Even the 2019 57.5% share was a dip from its 62.15% tally of 2014. So, the red signals had always flashed.

Yet, democracy gained. That is something to celebrate. For all the sharp dispute over principles, tactics and strategy, among the many contesting parties, there was no report of any serious violence. That should teach the rest of Africa that only principled dissent powers progress.

Besides, after its traumatic experience with White minority rule, it is nice that post-apartheid South Africa is embarking on some democratic de-coupling and hopefully, a future fusion: not based on colour, or even on numbers (which could have been reversed Black apartheid), but on the quality of ideas — from Black, White, Indian or Mixed — to push the rainbow nation to new heights.

In 30 years, ANC has not been able to do that. But aside from the sleaze that has crept into its ranks, ANC’s failure was partly because the 1994 agreements still left the economy — and the nation’s wealth and assets — pretty much in the hands of the apartheid-era elite, though now reformed to subject themselves to the dictates of democratic rule.

That planted the seed for ANC to self-dissipate. Whatever reforms it carried

out, it could not quite slake the acute thirst of its more radical wings, which had dreamed of sweeping post-apartheid wealth redistribution, that should give the Black — and poor — majority a decent share of the national pie.

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The first red light flashed in 2013, when Julius Malema, symbolising the alienated youth, pulled out from the ANC old guard, to form the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). That very name echoed the plight of the youths, looking for a quick fix.

The EFF resonated with the radical youths; but as with Tunji Braithwaite’s National Advance Party (NAP: 1983) and Omoyele Sowore’s African Action Congress (AAC: 2019), it gathered little traction beyond campaign huff and parliamentary stirs, as the maverick Malema often descended on his old party, particularly during the tenure of Jacob Zuma as State President.

Six years later — 2019, and barely six months to the 2024 elections — the disgraced Zuma — still a fiery force in his KwaZulu-Natal homeland — would also pull out to form NK (“Spear of the Nation”): incidentally the name of the ANC military wing, during the apartheid years, when Zuma was a prime player. It is an evocative name that suits fine Zuma’s own sense of victimhood, when not a few accuse him — and not unfairly so — of the grand corruption that crippled the ANC and sucked clean its mystique.

Had both EFF and NK remained with ANC, the party would still have garnered 63.76% of the June 4 general election tally, despite the mass disillusion in the land. But between both, Zuma’s NK appears to pose the greater danger. 

By polling some 45.9 % of votes in his native KwaZulu-Natal, the third biggest in the South African Parliament is all but a regional party. That could bring back ethnic tension — and violence — that Zuma himself ironically helped to roll back in 1994, when a good number of the Zulu, arrayed behind Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Nkata Freedom Party (NFP), embarked on a Black-on-Black (read NFK vs ANC) violence in that region.

African traditional disputes hardly quickly ends, with the parties digging in for a fight-to-finish. If that holds true in South Africa, then an ANC alliance with NK or EFF, is all but precluded. That opens a rather intriguing window with the DA — practically the surviving “White” party from the apartheid era, though the party is said to have latterly made cross-racial gains, among the middle class Blacks; and the upwardly mobile across other races.

That would be something very interesting: the ANC (legacy party of the majority Black dispossessed), striking a power deal with DA (the closest to the legacy party of the apartheid era minority White overlords)! Indeed, some leading lights of DA collaborated with the then apartheid government, if only as principled opposers to force a change from within. Is a reset then near? Time will tell!

Whatever happens on June 16, South Africa stands on the cusp of some change — good or bad, it is too early to tell. The ANC, hobbled and humbled, just has to learn how to share power with others. That could, if political projections are anything to go by, be the template in the very immediate future.

Still, it would not matter much if democracy wins in 2029 and 2034, as it has in 2024, even if the majority party slipped. The parties in parliament can always cobble together a government that can deliver on the hopes and aspirations of long-suffering South Africans, made very acute by dreary socio-economic numbers.

The ANC stumble should hold a huge lesson for Nigeria. If the ANC, founded in 1912, as a mass party with very clear ideology, could dissipate in just 30 years of democracy, Nigeria’s ruling — and other parties — must strive to renew themselves.

The PDP, Nigeria’s first ruling party since 1999, had little ideology beyond grabbing power and using or misusing it. It overplayed its cards and got blown away in 2015. APC, the current ruling party, must learn from both PPP

But even if APC were to falter, it would not really matter, if democracy actually won. That is the shining story from South Africa, even with the ANC gasping for breath.

By Paul Ejime

The results of South Africa’s 2024 elections further illustrate what pro-democracy groups have always affirmed: good governance/leadership is tribe and race-blind.

South Africa comprises people of diverse origins, cultures, languages, and religions, including Indian South Africans, who constitute 2.7% of the population, the 8.2% coloured South Africans, and the indigenous majority Blacks who make up more than 81% of the nation’s estimated 62 million inhabitants.

Much of the atrocities wrought by the authoritarian, minority white regimes that dominated the political, social, and economic life in the former apartheid enclaves of South Africa and South-West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s, are irreversible. Indeed, no one expects the damage of the institutionalized racial segregation unleashed by the White South Africans on the Black majority population to disappear within 30 years.

 After decades of anti-apartheid struggles waged internally and internationally, led by African countries, the then-Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Commonwealth, the African National Congress (ANC), an off-shoot of the liberation movement, emerged as the dominant political party in South Africa from the first multi-racial elections of 1994.

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The legendary Nelson Mandela, alias ‘Madiba’ the icon of the anti-apartheid struggle gave expression to the axiom “from prison to the presidency,” by winning the presidency in the 1994 elections after his incarceration for 27 years for challenging the apartheid system.

Revered and praised for his conciliatory, non-violent philosophy even in the face of inhumane provocations, Madiba did not only succeed in relatively uniting a racially divided South Africa to create a “Rainbow Nation” that attempted to harness its diversity, he also led by example, stepping aside after serving for just one four-year term in office. He died a global statesman in December 2013.

Unfortunately, African leaders, including those from Mandela’s home country, have failed to emulate or follow his example.

Under South Africa’s constitution, the party or coalition that wins a majority vote and at least 201 of the 400 parliamentary seats produces the president of the republic.

From the 1994 elections, Mandela became South Africa’s President as the flag bearer of the ANC with a majority vote of 62.5%. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which also draws much support from the black homeland of KwaZulu, came third, with 10.54%.

The then-main opposition white-dominated National Party (NP) came second with 20.39% vote, and later morphed into the Democratic Party (DP) and now the Democratic Alliance (DA).

Given the dynamism of politics, there have been realignment of political forces since 1994, when the voter turnout was 86.87%, but the much expected positive transformation of black lives under the ANC has failed to materialise.

Mandela’s then-deputy, Thabo Mbeki, more an academic than a typical politician, succeeded his boss as president of South Africa following the 1999 elections, after an ANC win with 66.36% vote. This was at a time when the opposition parties were in disarray, with the IFP getting 8.54% and the DP, just 9.54% of the vote, from a record voter turnout of 89.30%.

Mbeki was re-elected president in 2004 but could not complete his second four-year term due to serious disputes within the ANC. This resulted in Mbeki’s replacement as ANC leader and president of South Africa, by Kgalema Motlanthe from 2008 until the election in 2009.

At the 2009 election, the ANC fielded veteran and combative trade unionist Jacob Zuma, President Mbeki’s deputy who led the move for his boss’ ouster. Internal wrangling within the ruling party worsened, resulting in the formation of the Congress of the People (COPE) by disgruntled ANC members and the strengthening of the opposition.

Consequently, the ANC got 65.9% of the vote in the 2009 election, while COPE ate into Black votes with 7.24% leaving the main opposition DA with 16.66%.

A combination of the intra-party differences exacerbated by ANC’s inability to deliver on its promises of Black empowerment and the creation of equal opportunities to make the lives of the majority population better have dealt a lethal blow to the black-dominated ruling party.

Zuma was re-elected as South African President in 2014 but, as a controversial persona dogged by scandals, his vigorous attempts to stamp his authority on the ANC divided the party the more.

The erstwhile party of the Great Madiba has thus, seen its share of popular votes in steady decline, to 62.15% in 2014, while that of the main opposition DA rose to 22.23% with another ANC breakaway group, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), getting a slice of 6.35%.

Voter turnout declined to 73.48% in 2014 as a further demonstration of disaffection among the population towards the ANC-led government.

However, even after being replaced as leader of the ANC by deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a business mogul, who succeeded Zuma as President of South Africa after the 2019 presidential election, the veteran labour leader does not want to go down alone.

In the 2019 election, the ANC won with a further reduced majority of 57.5%, while the DA got 20.77% and the EFF 10.8%, with voter turnout of 66.05% – the lowest since 1994.

Meanwhile, with several allegations of corruption still hanging on his neck and after serving a term for contempt of court, Zuma would appear to have reinvented himself politically.

In his determination to become a life-long ANC member, the 82-year-old hijacked the uMkhonto weSizwe (Zulu for ‘Spear of the Nation’), or MK Party founded in 2023 and named after the paramilitary wing of the ANC.

At the 2024 election last Sunday, Zuma ran as the presidential candidate of the MK Party, and came fourth with 7.62% of the vote, according to provisional results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

The main opposition DA, which had John Steenhuisen, 48, as its flag bearer, made further gains by scoring 26.34%, while the EFF, led by Julius Malema, 43, got 8.1% of the vote.

Ramaphosa is seeking re-election on the platform of the ANC and as widely expected, the black-dominated ruling party has for the first time since 1994 failed to win parliamentary majority of votes in South Africa. The ANC managed less than 43% of the vote, and will now be forced to enter into an uncomfortable arrangement with rival parties to form a government, an uncharted course in the country’s political history.

Even by South African standards, the ANC’s 2024 electoral performance from some 27.6 million registered voters and a turnout of 58.64% from the country’s estimated population of 62 million speaks volumes.

There was great hope and expectations that Madiba’s would re-write South Africa’s dark history. But it has failed most spectacularly to deliver good governance after wresting political power from the apartheid minority white rulers.

Acknowledging the party’s underwhelming performance as a development with potentially dire consequences for its relevance and continued existence as a big player in South African politics, ANC senior officials are now suggesting the formation of a National Unity Government even as the main opposition parties position themselves as king-makers.

The world is watching with a keen interest the political development of South Africa.

A strong message for African leaders is that as the majority of Blacks in South Africa voted out the obnoxious apartheid minority White regime in South Africa, people of all races can/will punish bad governance/leadership, anywhere irrespective of race or colour!

•Ejime is a global affairs analyst